


Five Minutes

by Skyepilot



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Eating, F/M, First Kiss, First Time, Fix-It, Flirting, Friends to Lovers, Humor, Male-Female Friendship, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-02 03:32:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16297376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyepilot/pseuds/Skyepilot
Summary: Written for Cousyfixit prompt: anything goes.Reimagining the beginning to S4, when Daisy is being pursued by SHIELD as she hunts the Watchdogs.





	Five Minutes

He leans into the bar, looking down at the glass of scotch between them.

Staring into it, they're almost to the bottom of the shared glass.

When he meets her eyes again, there is that same indescribable force between them.

Pulling her in.

It's why she ran.

It's what she wants. What she knows she can't have.

He lifts the glass and finishes it all off, and she watches.

His hand dropping the glass carefully to the bar again, holding it only by the tips of his fingers.

Then he closes the space between them, an extra button on his shirt undone, she realizes.

"I know what you're doing," she tells him accusingly.

His smile in return is slow, and a bit lopsided, like someone who is amused they've been caught.

"Is it working?"

  
###

  
"I like your eyeliner."

She rolls her eyes at him. This was a bad idea.

"You look like you haven't shaved or slept in a month," she says back to him.

"Thanks," he tells her sarcastically. "I've been a little on edge lately."

Why this time was different, she's not sure. He's been chasing her for months.

It was just hearing his voice, and the sadness in it. Desperation.

She's seen him plenty of times. Watched him thinking he's watching her.

But it was his voice. That's what did it.

He just asked for five minutes. Now it's been fifteen and they're sitting in a diner.

With a plate of French fries between them and waiting for their malts to arrive.

"Check, please?" she tells the waitress when she returns with the malts.

Coulson doesn't touch his while she unwraps her straw and starts drinking it.

"I'm fine," she tells him. "Don't believe everything you read in the papers, okay?"

"I don't," he says to her with a solemn expression, as she dips a fry in the malt and eats it.

"I'm trying to keep them off your back," he goes on. "There's a new Director."

"Agent Coulson again," she says with a wistful smile. She thinks "A.C." but doesn't say it out loud.

"Do you want to help me out with some intel?" she asks. "Maybe the location of all the Inhumans you've tagged?"

"You already know all of that," he says, as though he's maybe a little proud of the fact.

"Are you going to drink your malt?" she asks him, eyeing him. "It's melting."

"Sure," he answers, after a beat, and unwraps his straw.

She watches him suck on it, his eyes taking in details, profiling. It's what he does.

"Nice beard," she says, lifting up another fry.

  
###

  
She doesn't let him see the van. He'll remember the plates.

And knowing him, he'd never share it with SHIELD, but he would still try to keep tabs on her.

"I know you're trying to help," she tells him, as they walk down the block. "I can take care of myself."

"Daisy," he says, looking up at the bright L.A. sky through his sunglasses. "You're a terrible liar."

"Only when it comes to you," she confesses, stopping on the sidewalk, squinting in the sun.

"The bandages you're hiding with the long sleeves. In this weather?"

"Yeah, well, it's more subtle than your 'beard of sorrow'".

He tries to pretend he's more hurt than amused by that. "I'll gladly shave it off, if I can just-"

"What?" she asks him, crossing her arms.

"If I can see you," he sighs, like it's something he shouldn't be saying out loud. He does seem a bit desperate.

The thing is, as much as she's been ducking and dodging him this whole time, refusing to let her mind rest on him.

She wants to. It's so much work to make herself avoid him.

Leaving SHIELD wasn't as hard as she thought.

It was leaving him.

Of how dangerous it would be, after Hive, to replace one addiction with another.

Instead of protecting him from her. The rotten center of everything.

People die because of her.

"How do I know you're not being followed?" she asks him, as he gives her a hopeful look.

"I don't know that I'm not being followed," he smirks. "I have a few tricks up my sleeve."

"Gonna show me something new?"

He returns it with a look of complete adoration.

That's what she's afraid of.

  
###

  
They're back in her motel room, and he's in the bathroom.

She can see him from the bed, where she's working on her laptop tracking Watchdogs.

Pretending not to watch as he examines the angles of his jaw In the mirror, applies the pink shaving cream.

Turning to look at the strip of hairless skin where the razor has drawn a path.

It's disarmingly domestic, seeing him do something he's probably done a million times.

It's not a thing that she's ever had. Just glimpses of it, and it's never been hers.

He manages to nick himself with the razor and steadies his hand again.

"You want some help with that?" she asks.

"No," he tells her. "This was my idea. Let me take my licks."

"What is SHIELD going to think, when you show up looking like yourself again?" she says, closing her laptop.

The chuckle bounces around inside the bathroom. "I haven't been back to base for weeks."

"Then what will Mack say?" she presses on.

"You've been watching us," he tells her, setting down the razor for a moment. "Huh."

"Is that so surprising?" she says, trying to deflect. "I'm trying to think one step ahead."

"You were always so good at that," he says, wincing a little as he drags the razor across his face.

"That's why you recruited me," she tells him, getting off the bed and walking closer. "I found your mark before SHIELD did."

"That's not why I recruited you," he tells her, turning his eyes to her.

She looks at the pink razor in his hand and the pink shaving cream on his face, and tries not to laugh.

"Why did you recruit me, then?" she tells him, taking the razor slowly out of his hand.

His posture changes, and he seems wrong-footed for a moment, but recovers.

He makes room for her next to him in the tiny bathroom.

"Because you cared what happened to him after we found him," he tells her.

  
###

  
"Is it working?"

This is exactly what she was afraid of.

When they first met, this would've been easy for her. Fun.

The open flirting. The give and take. Seeing if the other could keep up.

Now, it terrifies her, because he's so much more to her than he knows.

She's been lying to herself into believing that it was about protecting him.

What she really wanted was to have nothing to lose.

"Yeah," she finally answers, trying to keep the fear out of her voice. "Why are you doing this?"

His face goes suddenly sober. "I should've let you in. All the way. Instead of just trying to help."

"And now you're going to? Just like that?" she asks skeptically.

"I'm not very good at this," he admits to her. "I mean, I'm still pretty good at this," he jokes, motioning between them.

"But not what comes after?" she fills in.

"No," he tells her. "I know how to be whatever it is I need to be. For everyone else."

"I guess that makes two of us," she says. "It sort of contains the mess I've made of-"

"You're not a mess, Daisy," he tells her, putting his hand on her arm. 'You're-"

"Yes, I am," she interrupts, punctuating the words. "I just wanted to be messy for awhile, and not have you telling me that I'm not."

"That's not what I meant to do."

"I know," she says with a sigh. "That's the whole problem."

"I can't change that," he admits, his eyes searching, as though he's thinking of two things at once.

"Should we have another drink, or call it?" he finally asks.

She can tell that something about what she's said has shaken him. He's withdrawing again.

What she doesn't want is more terrible scotch to wash it down with.

  
###

  
He told her that he's not going to stop trying to help.

Defiantly, as they stood in the parking lot of the motel, just a few feet from the dive bar.

She never doubted that.

Then he asked if this had made things worse. And the answer is: yes.

But she doesn't tell him that, she just takes him back to her motel room, leading the way.

He said that she's not messy, but that's so far from the truth. He'll keep trying to prove that to her.

She unlocks the door, and closes it behind them.

Then it takes her a few tries before he starts to kiss her back, tentatively, his back up against the door.

"Is this what you want?" she asks him, pressing her thumb against his chin to separate them.

"The real question," he replies. "Is if this is what you want."

She lets her hands drop from the door to her sides, and stares into his eyes, trying to read him.

Coulson is a sweet guy, but he's also razor sharp, clever.

Her whole plan is going to fail, because he's already figured it out.

"I know what you're trying to do," he tells her with a shy smile, bending his knee to put his boot against the door.

Curiously, he doesn't look troubled by it at all. He looks like he'd only like to be kissed again.

"Are you going to stop trying to protect me from myself?" she demands.

"Are you going to let me try?"

She kisses him again, for real this time.

He's not hesitant when he kisses her back, he wraps his hand around the nape of her neck and pulls her in closer to him.

Tasting like cheap scotch and there is the tinge of sweat on his skin, like he's as nervous as she is.

Desperate.

But through all of that is a connection. One she's never been able to untether.

And it doesn't feel like addiction at all.

  
###

  
It's the earliest hours of the morning, still dark, and she gets up and starts to dress.

Coulson is still sleeping on the small full bed, lying on his stomach, his arm dangling over the edge.

He seems like he's in a restful sleep, swathed in nothing but a sheet.

It's a good look on him.

She still has to keep moving. She has a mission, and the Watchdogs are on the move.

Her laptop goes in the backpack, and she sets it down on the end of the bed.

Circling it, she stops in front of him, watching his back rise and fall.

The deep scar there, as a reminder that he really shouldn't be here.

What will happen after this, she's not sure. She can't work out all the possibilities yet.

But now she only has a different kind of regret.

"Hey, I've got to go," she tells him in a quiet voice, sliding her fingers along his bare skin.

He stirs, and turns over, reaching up for her in the darkness, and letting her hand guide his fingers to her face.

"Okay," he replies to her in a raspy, just awake voice. "Call me?"

She starts to chuckle and kisses the ends of his fingers. "I know how to find you."

"No chance I can find a way to keep you here a little longer?" he asks, in that voice.

He turns onto his side, and draws her down to sit on the edge of bed

Her face starts to get hot, and it travels through her, as she slips her hand under the sheets.

It makes him sigh wonderfully.

"Mmm. Five minutes," she tells him in a teasing voice.

"Fifteen," he purrs, pulling her back down into the bed with him.


End file.
